This Year, Let's Choose Forgiveness

Hello CWO ladies!
I am so thrilled to get the opportunity to share with you and meet some new friends. I’m also very excited about what is going on here at CWO, Lisa and Linda have big plans and I can’t wait to see all the fun they have in store for us!

At the start of a new year, I like to look back and think about the past year and how I want this year to be different. I always have new ideas and aspirations at the new year, but none of them will come about by chance. I have to be intentional about the decisions I make if I want anything to change or improve in my life.

Our lives are filled with choices. Day in and day out, sometimes hour by hour, choices.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20
19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live
20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.
NIV

I love how God sets before us a decision to make and then gives us the right answer… “now choose life.”

Oh how I wish He did that all the time, don’t you?!

Thankfully, we do not have life and death decisions to make on a regular basis. However, we do make decisions everyday that bring life (joy, hope, growth) or death (stagnant, lifeless, sin abounding) into our lives.

I could touch on several different things here, but I want to look at one particular area in which we all have a choice to make.

The choice of forgiveness or unforgiveness.

Will I forgive or will I hold unforgiveness in my heart?

One of the best examples I’ve ever heard about unforgiveness was comparing it to a person drinking poison and expecting someone else to fall over dead.

When I hold resentment and vengeance in my heart, it defiles me.
It hurts ME, not the person I’m upset with.

I KNOW this one girls.

I have spent many a day stewing on things that others have done OR stewing on things that I perceived they have done.
Can I get a uh-huh on that one?!

Ladies, let this be the year to forgive.
To move forward, enough looking in the rear view mirror.

Hebrews 12:1
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded
by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight,
and the sin which so easily ensnares us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

We can stumble through this race
doing it our way and choosing
to carry the weight of offense on our own shoulders,
or we can lay it aside-
at the foot of the cross-
and RUN this race as He intends us to!

Yes, you may have been done wrong.
Yes, it hurts!
Yes, He knows.
And yet, He still says…forgive.
From Jesus’ own words:

Luke 11:4
4 Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
NIV

He would never ask you to do something contrary to His will for you.
He came to bring you life!

Trust Him on this.
Look at these verses, each one has something very powerful to say to us:

Rom 12:17-21
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.

20 On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."

21 Do not be overcome by evil,
but overcome evil with good.
NIV

Sometimes we misunderstand forgiveness. We think we are letting someone “get away with it” if we forgive. Nothing could be farther than the truth.
When we forgive:
1. We take our hands off it
2. We release our hearts into the care of the Father
3. We give HIM the “room” to deal with it as He sees fit.
4. We overcome evil with good!

Let’s pray,
Father, we come to You and thank You for your incredible love for us.

I pray Lord that You would pour Yourself out on each heart that is reading this and hurting because of what someone else has done to them.
I ask you Lord to heal the hurts and give them the strength and desire to forgive those who’ve harmed them.
Father give us ears to hear what Your heart is speaking and the courage to let go of offense. Let the chains of offense fall off us as we yield our will to Yours and choose LIFE by forgiving.
In the wonderful name of Jesus we pray.
Amen.

For further study, I would encourage you to read Colossians chapter 3.

Blessings,
Sue